PHOTO/STEPHEN WOLFE
WASHINGTON, DC — On April 22, 1,000,000 + scientists and supporters joined the March for Science in 600 events in 50 states and 66 countries (into@marchforscience.com). Most returned one week later to join the People’s Climate March. For many scientists these were their first steps into political protest. Brought to the marches by proposed cuts in science funding and the growing anti-science environment, we were determined to take a stand for science, humanity and our planet. It was a pleasure and an honor to join my colleagues and friends.
On May 5, an appropriations bill funding the US government for the rest of fiscal year 2017 was signed into law. The $1.1 trillion bill included a $2 billion increase in the National Institutes of Health’s budget and none of the major cuts to science funding that inspired the March for Science. Did we win? No, the appropriations bill only funds the US government until September 30, 2017. The proposed cuts in science funding were in the 2018 fiscal budget, so the struggle has only been postponed for a few months.
While the fight for science has to continue on many fronts, a key area is the defense of the climate change research and basic science in the EPA. Trump’s 2018 budget proposes a 31% decrease in EPA funding, which would decimate the agency. It is vital to protect the EPA’s budget, however, it is perhaps more important to look at what is happening to science at the EPA. In addition to removing climate change information from the EPA website, EPA scientists are being silenced and threatened. Scientific papers are now reviewed internally to ensure that they conform to the government’s stated view on climate change. The makeup of the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors is going to be changed. This board reviews scientific work and evaluates the scientists performing this work. The appointment of climate change deniers to this board will destroy objective science within the EPA, threaten the jobs of EPA scientists, set a precedence for scientific performance reviews throughout the government, and endanger the academic peer review process.
It will not be easy to protect basic research at the EPA or anywhere else. Our current economic system has little use for the development of ideas that do not directly create profit or, even worse, expose its destructive nature. But this is what we must do if we are to save our profession and help save our planet. We need to develop an analysis of what is happening to basic science in a dying capitalist system and what it can become in a world based upon economic and social justice. We need to understand what role we can and must play in the struggle for social change and how to unite with this movement. The March for Science was the first step, now we must continue the journey to defend and expand science.
